Fisher of Men, Shepherd of Dreams
by visceralfringe
Summary: Steve Rogers' life is in pieces. With no friends to speak of, no country to call home, and no war to win, he grapples with a monumental identity crisis that only a miracle can solve. After the battle with Doomsday, Kal El conquers death and rises from the grave. But he's not ready to rejoin the world. Instead, he escapes to the wilds of Ireland. And he knows all about miracles.
1. Son of Samhain

' **My son,'**

 _Boots caked with mud, Steve reached a squat stone wall—hand built and beautiful in its crudeness—and appraised the cottage beyond. Morning fog still frothed in the foothills. An old man at Boar and Saddle, a pub fifteen miles from the heart of this moor, had directed him to this very spot._

 _Spot, not address._

 _Larger than a hovel, but in no way a suburban sales pitch, the house sat on an incline, covered by a well thatched roof. The larger hill behind it, like a giant trying a poor hand at hide and seek, commanded acknowledgment and somehow simultaneously declared how it favored and protected this humble human place. Glimpses of sunlight through the thick tarp of clouds above splashed light on the yard framed by the wall. It lay overgrown with twisting vines and robust hedges Steve couldn't begin to name._

' **I will never know whether you read this or not. I cannot take it, nor any of the truth, where I go now. It is strange to think that as I write this, you grow in my womb.'**

 _After leaving the Avengers, the disbandment of SHIELD's special forces, and the court ordered revoking of his US citizenship, nothing tethered him to America or to the West at all. Steve had decided to take his trade elsewhere. And if the United States, his beloved birth country of nearly a century, wouldn't welcome him, then he would set foot on the only other land lush with his lifeblood._

' **Where you come from is so important to me. Should you ever come to possess my letter, and Goddess willing you shall, then it is my joy beyond the telling to give you a hurried tale of our history. Your history.'**

 _Ireland._

 _For reasons beyond the reach of logic, profound curiosity had roosted in the lattice of his bones where it restlessly reminded him how little he knew about his origins two years ago. He had to find out._

 _Why had they left?_

 _What was so… so damn promising about America that drove his parents to uproot?_

 _Why had they come to a country that had killed them?_

 _Did he still have family here?_

' **My birth name is Shaela O'Rinn. I am told it will be changed when we reach America. I was born outside of Belfast in the early autumn of 1902 and raised in this cottage by my mother and her three sisters. When I met Joseph, a shepherd's son, we were sixteen. He worked too far from town to hear the gossip.'**

 _After he filled his chest with a breath for bravery, Steve took a step forward, put his hand on the rickety wooded gate, and pushed. Despite its ancient appearance, any troublesome vines released their grip and the gate swung open soundlessly. A force, as if Steve had taken a punch directly to the gut, vibrated through him._

 **'You see, my mother and my aunts were Pagan.'**

 _When Steve recovered from the strange barrage of unknown sensation he chalked up to emotions he had never dealt with, he started up the pathway to the door. Rounded at the crown, the door seemed to guard something—seemed to symbolize the tangible rampart separating him from a veritable trove of memory._

' **They had a range of professions from medicinal remedies to seamstress work, among other less life giving trades. As a girl, I had a challenging time understanding why strange young women came to call so late at night and left so quickly.'**

 _Steve placed his hand on the door. Jarring power rocketed through his palm and into his core. But as quickly as it came, it dissipated. He opened the door with a weary, rusted creak._

' **I could garden before I could count. I could sing before I could read.'**

 _A scent he knew but could not identify struck him. Steve struggled to swallow. The dwelling stood two stories from a cursory glance. Chimes, trinkets, and bobbles—tin and copper pipes that clinked musically against delicate bird bones, sea shells and salt crystals, intricate string webs sewn in circles of wood, coins of every color, woven figures, and feathers strewn with beads—hung from the rafters of the upstairs level. Dangling gemstones caught fleeting rays of sun that darted in through the window panes._

 _He brushed his fingertips against a hutch near the entrance._

 _Dustless._

 _New._

 _Silent._

 _Waiting._

' **By the time I met Joseph, I was deeply entrenched in their ways. Those ways became mine, as beloved and cherished to me as breath itself. They were loving women. I remember such happiness in this place.'**

 _The frosted windows distorted the outside garden, making him swear to seeing shifting shapes—wolfish and prowling as they peered into the cottage—beyond the glass, their legs nearly as long as Steve's._

' **Several nights a year, they would leave our cottage and disappear for the evening. There were times I would not see them until the sun saw me. Only when I went to market for the first time and noticed the disgust and naked horror on the faces we passed did I realize we were different. In Christian places, they called us "witches". The word sounded awful. I can only imagine how bad it tasted.'**

 _Bottles and what he could only assume was a human skull sat on the mantelpiece. A hutch beside the hearth housed smaller bottles of various shapes and shades. Some of their contents bubbled. Others shimmered like liquid starlight. Several bottles held an assortment of sands and sediment._

' **Our worship of the Earth as an entity and its many stewards was not well received. We were not treated kindly in polite society. We were openly mocked and threatened in the cities. Meanwhile, Joseph and I continued to see one another in private when he would herd his grandfather's flock across the moor.'**

 _On the wall above the hearth, an enormous ram's skull had been mounted to the stone, its empty eye sockets keeping vigil over the hut._

' **I attended my first sabbat at seventeen. By twenty-three, I had been named High Priestess, and a vessel for the Goddess. Have you questions about these customs, this house holds every answer. You need only look.'**

 _Books piled high in the corners framed shelves packed with more._

' **Joseph asked for my hand in marriage that spring, having no knowledge of my identity with the coven. I did not feel I could share it with him. He was Protestant. My Pagan heart, though it beat wholly for him, lacked the courage.'**

 _Beside the shelf were rows of hooks where bundles of dried plants, flowers, and herbs hung._

' **Joseph and I wed in the late winter. Most confused when I asked for a hand fast a month after his traditional marriage ceremony to compliment my beliefs, Joseph realized what I was. It mortified him. Everything I had feared came to fruition. He distanced himself from me. Crass as it may appear, I continued to practice with my coven. As their High Priestess, leaving was unthinkable.**

 **They were all I had. This brings me to a most difficult confession.'**

 _A green tapestry draped the wall closest to the kitchen table, embroidered with gold designs. In the heart of it was a Celtic knot of some sort._

Triquetra.

 _Steve balked and whirled around, searching his surroundings only to find himself as alone as before._

 _How had he known that word?_

' **There is a sabbat in October called Samhain in which we celebrate the legacy of the dead, a fruitful harvest, and the coming of winter. It is not uncommon that during such celebrations, certain things are required of me, tasks and rituals I deeply revere. My relationship with Joseph was fast on the mend until I was abruptly with child. We had not lain together in a period fitting for the pregnancy. I pray you are old enough now to infer my meaning. I hope you will never think less of Joseph. He agreed to take you as his own son. And I truly believe he loves you, if not that he will come to.'**

 _On the table sat a candle and a single piece of parchment held in place by a Great Scallop shell._

' **Thus, we are leaving Ireland. I have ceded my duties to the coven. I fear I have broken Joseph entirely. The bottle has become his dearest companion. He is running from my mistakes and the shame of what he considers my sin. I see you as my serenity and a little, growing sentinel of our world.**

 **Joseph will hear nothing of it, but the Goddess has gifted me a vision of my future. I will perish in America before you come of age.**

 **I have warded this place from entry using spells, blood magic, of my own crafting, spells designed to allow you and you alone to access this cottage. When my feet find America, I will endeavor to be a healer in a way Protestants will admire and understand until the Goddess takes me.'**

 _Step by step, Steve approached the table, listening to the comforting creaks of the floorboards beneath his feet._

' **One thing more. Until three years ago, a woman would come to visit us annually. We called her** **Ársa** **. While I knew her as blood relation, I did not ask which. She kept her hair shaved and her smile gentle. As hard as I try to recall, I cannot remember her ever having aged. Perhaps she cannot. Celebrating Yule with her was what we looked forward to most. After leaving our home to me, my mother and Aunts went East in search of her. I have no way of reaching them.**

 **The instances of persecution of Pagan in our community is escalating. And Joseph will not wait.'**

 _Carefully sliding the paper out from beneath the shell, Steve picked up the piece of paper._

' **If you find Ársa, then perhaps you will find more of our family. And in a way, I will be reunited with you, too.'**

 _He began to read._

' **You may wonder how I could know your sex when you are yet to be born. Visions, or clairvoyance, is a talent the Goddess has sanctified me with. I have seen you as a child and I have seen you in boyhood. Your frailty frightens me.**

 **Every evening, I whisper blessings over you that though your body may be fragile, your heart will beat with the strength of a hundred men. That you will fight against those who seek to desecrate this world. I have consumed every elixir accessible to keep you safe on the long voyage ahead.**

 **I leave everything to you, including the decision to burn my home to the ground if you deem that necessary. This knowledge is my gift to you. Accepting it is your choice.**

 **Before you decide, please indulge me with one thing. Look in the waxing mold at the center of the table. Inside, you will find the charm, a Pagan sigil, I yearned so desperately to give you myself. By the Goddess, I pray this symbol will always follow you, in one form or another.'**

Steve felt reality grow fuzzy. When he finished the letter, Steve reached into the mold, something he realized had been used to make candles, not as a candle itself.

' **I love you, my little Stiofán. No matter what path you choose to take.**

 **Eternally,**

 **Mother'**

Slowly, Steve pulled a silver chain from inside the hollow mold, at the bottom of which dangled a small, delicate, silver… _star_. The skeleton of the star had been encircled with a matching ring. Pentacle: another word he had never learned, but somehow named.

As if knocked in the sternum with a sledgehammer, Steve's breath left him. Stupefied, he stared at the pentagram in disbelief, the truth too eerie _—_ too echoing _—_ to be coincidence. A thousand images of his former uniform thundered through his memory. Drowning in bewilderment, he swayed on his feet.

The serum hadn't changed him.

The serum had only catalyzed the magic already instilled in his veins.

He wasn't a lab experiment.

He wasn't grown in a bottle.

He wasn't a weapon used by a government and then tossed aside as scrap when he outlived his utility. He had been baptized by a legacy he didn't understand, had been driven to fulfill a purpose higher than a single country. He had a family. He had a history, a living history, thriving in his blood.

He wasn't homeless. He wasn't empty. He wasn't stripped of his power.

But what was he to do now? How would he find this mystery woman? Who... who was his real father?

The paper in his trembling hand swam in and out of focus.

 _Mother..._


	2. Isle of Emerald

**AN. I wish I could include three categories… because Doctor Strange's The Ancient One is a major component of this tale. And maybe Stephen will pop in, too. Maybe Thor. *throws arms up haplessly* Come to think of it, shipping Thor and Steve in this plotline would be sinfully easy…**

 **Love Triangle? Love Cube? I can see it now! Two aliens, a Master Sorcerer, and an earthling shamelessly better the relations between their peoples with raucous, unapologetic sex.**

 **Yes, I'm ignoring the elephant in the forum.**

 ***sigh* I know what you're thinking…**

 **WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS MARVEL DC TRY TO BE WITCH SHIT. IT'S TRASH. YOU FREAK. 0_0**

 **Psh. Same train here.**

 **I can't say how, exactly, this story snuck into my mind. I've spent the beginning of my summer immersed in Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series. Nearly finished with the third book. This coupled with the fact that I practically live to ship the Comic Cinematic Universe must be the culprit. I've been on a Super America kick for a hot minute.**

 **If you have or want to wade through my other stories, I would be remiss not to admit that this is probably a sequel… or spin-off of Spangles of Steel. My Steve, regardless of the story sea I pitch him into, is the same Steve—a veteran suffering from PTSD, emotional malfunctions, suicidal tendencies, and a general lack of self-worth. That said, he's still a big, gritty badass who will always fight for the weak. In addition to Spangles of Steel, I direct you to Greed Smelled Like Sunshine if you want to toe the waters of his mind.**

 **Scary place.**

 **Anyway. I need to update a lot of my other tales. Sadly, I'm fixated on the deliciously endless possibilities for Steve's new superhero identity. It is my understanding that canonically, he dons the mantle of Nomad. Buuuuuut I may break all the rules, and the feels, and give that name to Supes. And now, back to the story.**

 **Excelsior!**

* * *

For three weeks, Steve had familiarized himself with what had been his mother's home. He paced the floors and mapped the moor until he could walk them both blindfolded. With the dissolution of the protective spells, the cottage began to deteriorate at an alarming pace. It had stood alone against torrents of rain and pervasive, clinging mists and mud for a century.

After careful study and instruction from Berit, the barman of Boar and Saddle, Steve tried his hand at repairing the thatched roof, its stalks rotted through. It took him three tireless tries before he realized the entire thing would need replacing. The wall ringing the garden lost more stones to dust by the day. And in spite of the consistent moisture, the garden withered.

After a month, the cottage had become all but uninhabitable.

"Useless!" In sheer, maddening frustration, Steve chucked his tools aside and seethed. "Why are you fighting me?" he barked.

Talking to himself had become a daily occurrence, a comforting habit in his solitude, but this time, he spoke to the house. To the eyes and shadows and shifting things always just outside of focus. The whispers, howls, and shuttering sounds.

Honestly, he should promptly march right back to Dublin and check himself into the nearest loony bin…

Fed up, he spun on his heel and stalked over to a sunken stone bench.

Steve plopped down and scrubbed his dirt darkened face with his calloused hands. "What am I doing? This is the dumbest task I've ever undertaken. Just a lot of… hocus pocus and nonsense. If anything did live here, its long dead. And it died long before I came. I… I don't believe... I don't believe any of this! I knew a good Christian woman who sang Psalms. Who sent me Catholic school. Who worked in a TB ward. This is all wrong! Why? How could you lie to me for so long?"

It was creeping back—resurfacing—the regret, despair, and utter, abysmal emptiness that had consumed him after his chilly undeath. He could feel it like a snake in the grass, growing by the day and coiling from his ankles upward, gawking on his strength and squeezing what little purpose he had left in his heart.

His heavy shoulders sagged as he sighed. "What did I expect? I don't belong here. I don't belong… anywhere," he choked out. With his elbows on his knees, he hung his head and tried to steel his resolve by shutting his eyes tight enough to cause splashes of color to burst behind his lids.

He opened them.

Steve blinked. Stared. Blinked again.

There, between his crusty boots in the midst of the gray, soggy grass… stood a little blue flower, peering up at him with its bright petals outstretched. A breeze kissed his cheek. Steve sat back and stared at the house and looked at it through fresh eyes and noticed the rampant imperfections—not a single perfect angle. Asymmetric, almost. Amateur.

So how the hell had it withstood the cruelty of this landscape, battered by the winds and wet weather?

 _Wrong._

He was doing this wrong.

The cottage hadn't been crafted by some master builder, or an architect with a lick of sense. But by a person interested in blending with the land, asking permission to share a piece of this wilderness, not to own the plot. This wasn't a place of man's law, or man's order.

He couldn't just waltz in here and expect to repair, to rebuild, a thing of faith with tools and time while the borrowed ground lay in such disarray.

He had to believe in it.

"OK," he said to the little flower. "OK."

Renewed, Steve stood, crossed the garden, and dug through the sunken shed adjoining the cottage. He _could_ belong here, but he would have to work for it.

He had to tend to and heal the land before he fixed the house.

* * *

After combing through the shed adjoining Star's Shelter, something he had taken to calling the cottage in his secret heart, Steve laid his inventory of tools out before him.

Rakes. Brooms. Hoes. Rope. Water yokes. Three buckets. Shovels of three different sizes. Watering cans. A plow. A handful of unbroken pots. A few mice. And about twelve different species of spiders.

The task didn't seem daunting. How hard could it be after all his other impossible undertakings? He'd fix up the yard, tend the garden, and then shift his focus to the house that borrowed resources and space from the land. A couple days' worth of work, at most. Easy as pie.

After piling all his supplies in the wheelbarrow and trying to push it across the lawn, he found the stone wheel cracked and its squeaking hinge broken. Steve sighed, carefully studying the mechanism. He could smith it back together with a hot enough fire. For now, carrying the tools would have to suffice.

To care for the land, he needed the tools. And the tools needed a custodian of their own. He put his ambitious plans aside, seized the wash pale from his pile, and marched over to the water pump… only to find the hand pump rusted shut. After he dragged a hand down his grizzled face, he stood back and appraised the press, following a line of weeds to a squat stone well. He tied the bucket's handle off with a length of rope and let it down into the hole. He pulled up half a pale of silt, murky water, and a dead raven.

Steve grumbled, stalked through the yard, and set out across the moor on a quest to find the fresh water stream.

* * *

From the crest of a hill beyond the moor, Berit the barman pounded the replacement fence post into the ground. He shook his head at the stubborn fool porting pale after pale from the stream.

"Poor lad. Hopeless, this lot. Been sleeping since the sisters left. He'll sooner die than see it live."

"Who is he?" Kal asked.

"Not too sure. One of Joseph's, I think. Not a drop of magic in him, far as I can tell. Grandson, maybe. Could be more distant relation."

"Magic." Kal turned an incredulous smirk, shouldering his driver.

Berit's mustache twitched as he bristled. "Gah. You're all the same. Once you touch down in America, they suck it out of ya. That place feeds on the soul, squeezes every last lick of what makes the soul mean anything out, mark my words."

"Nothing beats hard work and determination, boss. See quite a bit of both from him."

Berit turned toward the moor again, drinking in the fog weaving through the wilderness. The cries. The calls. The croaks and collective eerie air of it all. "That place clings to the old country. The old magic. Needs a steward. Not a contractor. But some just aren't open to it, like Jo Rogers. I was a little lad when I met him. Christ. That man hit the drink hard before they shipped off to America. Nearly spooked the horse I was shoe'in half to death one night. Somethin' rotten killed him before America could. Farm was washed out not long after he uprooted his family, too." He peeled off his cap and wiped the sweat form his pockmarked brow. "Why this buck is hellbent on the O'Rinn property is beyond me. All I could direct him to though. All that's left. Fellow has to be plenty lonely to need a place like this to wallow, if you ask me."

Kal dropped a lazy grin and planted his hand on his hip. "I think you owe him a round or two at the Saddle when he proves you wrong."

Berit howled with laughter. "I'll tell you what, sonny. If he restores that cesspit, he has an open tab on board and brew at me pub for the rest of his livin' days."

Kal lingered as Berit, chuckling and muttering beneath his breath, trudged back through the heather. He watched the stranger. The way the exertion of his work made his clothing cling to him, Kal confirmed that the wayfarer was no small man. Standing at a breath or two shorter than himself, the stranger had fair hair, sure feet, and no shortage of muscle. He followed Berit when the man hoisted his yoke over his head and started back to the O'Rinn cottage.

But Kal, unlike Berit, held out hope for him.

* * *

It took two days, a near obliteration of the kiln, and several accidental arm scorchings before Steve could fan a flame in the forge hot enough to heat and pound out all the cracks in the garden tools. He spent the next day scrubbing the crust and grime from their blades and handles. On Sunday, he rested, replenished his pantry, and puzzled over the necklace his mother Sarah… his mother _Shaela_ … had left him.

How could something so old, so unfamiliar, resemble the symbol that had adorned his chest for decades?

The real work began that Monday morning. Before he got started, he put the necklace on for the first time, its clasp ridiculously small between his calloused fingers, the chain laughably frail in comparison to the metals he brandished in his time with SHIELD, its weight less than a grain of sand when pitted against his standard issue equipment.

But when he put it on… when he stood tall and measured himself against the man he had been and the man in his shoes, he felt impossibly stronger.

As if this wasn't plain silver at all.

As if this necklace amounted to an item more powerful than all his weapons combined.

The pills; a distant memory. The nightmares; beyond reach. The doubt and indecision; dead and gone.

One by one, Steve dug up every stone that had comprised the pathway, uncovering more roaches than could ever be comforting. Using the rake, he churned the neglected soil and had a hell of a time pulling up a weed that had rooted from the front gate to the front door. He also unearthed the bench and dragged its pieces to the breaking place he had discovered.

Because those beautiful things, those reminders of what had been lost, were not his.

He had not sang to the slabs when they had been carved from the cliffside. He had not fed his sweat into their transport and installment. He had, however endured an array of bites that afternoon.

He couldn't subdue the illusion of skittering legs and tickling antennae across his body that night and awoke aching from all the tossing. Groggily, he made his way down the stairs, stooped over a kitchen basin, and scrubbed his face.

Instead of reinstalling the same stones on Tuesday, Steve hauled the best sledgehammer from the forge and reduced the old path to dust, dust he would mix into an experimental blend of clay and water to repair the wall.

Swaddled in heat too real to be imagined or the result of tedious labor, Steve became aware of being watched on Wednesday—half a dozen wolves sunning themselves on a crag. Was it his imagination, or had the moor become brighter this week? It must have been seasonal. Ignoring the curious eyes, he resumed his wall repairs, carefully filling in the cracks between the stones that had guarded this place for a hundred years.

When Thursday came, he turned his attention to the garden. Try as he might to be discerning about the plants he weeded free and the ones he kept, Steve found that he could not recognize wildflower from garden glory. So, eventually, he pulled them all. He ripped the roots, thick and thin, that wrenched the deepest from their complacency, their stems cutting into his hands, his blood mingling with the soil.

When the plot had been cleared and cleaned, he heaped the mess of plants harvested from their wilting mounds at the heart of the garden. There, he burned them the flames soaring higher than he anticipated, practically licking the sky.

Because of his body's incredible resistance to toxins, he didn't need to worry about drinking the water straight from the stream. Strangely, it tasted familiar. But trudging to the stream every day would prove cumbersome, he knew, if this place would become the home he wanted.

 _The well._

He had to fix the well.

* * *

 **The next chapter will be predominantly about Kal. Much excite.**


End file.
